Abstract
Lacan’s interest in science was in function of his effort to clarify in what way psychoanalysis can be considered a science. Clearly Freud wanted to qualify it as such, for this was the only way, he thought, to give his discovery of the unconscious intellectual respectability in the scientifico-cultural world of his time. The classical hypothetico-experimental methodology of nineteenth century science held for Freud an abiding fascination, and his ambition, initially at least, was to develop a theory of psychoanalysis that could approximate an analogous certitude. But the classic methodology rested on an epistemology that was positivistic in nature, where objects of research were essentially accessible through sense perception, and any contribution of the subject to the knowability of the object could be, in principle, disallowed by the rigor of procedure. For Lacan, however, the scientific paradigm of choice was not nineteenth century physics but twentieth century linguistics. Here, the role of the subject, especially when the method is applied to psychoanalysis, is inseparable from the research procedure itself, and the scientific character of the process must be conceived differently.
“The truth of pain is pain itself.”
— Anonymous
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Notes
Jacques Lacan, “Science and Truth,” trans. B. Fink News Letter of the Freudian Field,1 (1989): 4–29/85577. The essay, published separately in Ecrits (1966, 855–77), was the opening lecture of Le Seminaire. Livre XIII. L ‘objet de la psychanalyse (1965–1966) (unpublished).
Lacan, Écrits. A Selection, trans. A. Sheridan ( New York: W. W. Norton, 1977 ).
The Seminaire of Jacques Lacan. Book XX(1972–1973), the Limits of Love and Knowledge. J.-A. Miller, ed., B. Fink, trans. ( New York: W.W. Norton, 1998 ), 119.
Lacan prefers to call Dilthey’s Geisteswissenschaften “conjectural” rather than “humane” or“social” sciences because “conjectural” allows the suggestion of exact calculability (in terms, at least, of probability theory), whereas “human” and “social” leave room for an anthropocentric humanism that he repudiates. The term allows a closer approximation of “conjectural” science to “exact” science: “The opposition between exact sciences and conjectural sciences is no longer sustainable once conjecture is subject to exact calculation (using probability) and exactness is merely grounded in a formalism separating axioms from laws for grouping symbols” (1989 11). Psychoanalysis would be just such a conjectural science.
R. Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, trans., D. A. Cress ( Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998 ), 65.
Explanations of this thesis abound: e.g., B. Fink, The Lacanian Subject. Between Language and Jouissance. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); J. S. Lee, Jacques Lacan (Boston: Twayne, 1990); J. Dor, Introduction to the Reading of Lacan. The Unconscious Structured Like a Language. J. F. Gurewich and S. Fairfield, eds., (Northvale, NJ and London: Jason Aronson, 1997); J. P. Muller and W. J. Richardson, Lacan and Language. A Reader’s Guide to the Ecrits ( New York: W. W. Norton, 1983 ), 1–25.
The “ego” for Lacan is essentially a unified image, perceived as if reflected in a mirror embodied in some other that gathers into unity the still disordered elements of the becoming subject (Écrits, 1–7).
Lacan, “Position of the Unconscious,” trans. Bruce Fink in Fink, M. Jaanus, R. Feldstein, eds., Reading Seminar XI Lacan ‘s Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis ( Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995 ), 269.
Leupin notes that when Lacan rewrites Descartes’ cogito as I think, “therefore I am” as cited above, he intends to underline the division between the (speaking) “subject of the enunciation” and the (spoken) “subject of the enunciated.” A. Leupin, “Introduction,” Leupin, ed., Lacan and the Human Sciences Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991) 20, n. 4.
R. Grigg, “Metaphor and Metonymy,” Newsletter of the Freudian Field, 3 (1989): 59–79.
S. Freud, Negation [1925] in Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. and cd. J. Strachey et al. (London: Hogarth Press, 1966–74), S.E. 19, 237.
Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis,S.E. 22 [1932], 170.
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams,S.E. 4 and 5 [1900], 620.
For example: “On the Grounds for Detaching a Particular Syndrome under the DescriptionAnxiety Neurosis. Incidence and Aetiology of Anxiety Neurosis” (1895); “Obsessions and Phobias: Their Psychical Mechanism and Their Aetiology” (1895); “Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses” (1896); “Further Remarks on the Neuropsychoses of Defence. The Specific Aetiology of Hysteria” (1896); “The Aetiology of Hysteria” (1896); “Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses” (1896); “My Views on the Part Played by Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses” (1906); Introductury Lectures on Psychoanalysis. General Theory of the Neuroses. Some thoughts on Elements and Regression - Aetiology (1916), etc.
For a succinct analysis of the nature of truth both as correspondence and coherence, and each as distinct from meaning, see M. Cavell, The Psychoanalytic Mind: From Freud to Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996 [1993]), 17–18.
Lacan, The Seminar ofJacques Lacan. Book 1. Freud’s Papers on Technique. 1953–1954. Ed. J. A. Miller. J. Forrester, trans. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988), 263/289.
Science and Truth, “ 17. The word ”cause,“ to begin with, is highly ambiguous, and Lacan makes much of this ambiguity. Bowie summarizes: ”Lacan toys relentlessly with a single pun, on the word cause: the unconscious is the cause of truth (causes it, makes it happen) and analysis has sole responsibility for defending truth’s cause (its interests, its standing). This piece of word-play is confidently executed, and has the support of etymology: the Latin causa had both senses and also, for that matter, gave birth to the thing (chose) so elaborately played upon in “The Freudian Thing.” But does the pun portray or disguise its own incoherence? The two senses of cause can scarcely have equivalent and co-active roles in the causerie of 3psychoanalysis.“ M. Bowie, Lacan ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991 ), 119.
Ibid., 18. Who the philosopheer was is a matter of conjecture. Fink (“Jacques Lacan, `Science and Truth.”’ News Letter of the Freudian Field 12 [1989]: 4–29; 28) suggests Merleau-Ponty, but Dany Nobus, in a private communication, notes that Merleau-Ponty died in 1960, five years earlier, and could hardly be referred to as “a philosopher [recently] awarded full academic honors.”
The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology notes “evident” from the Latin e-videre as having originally the sense of the middle voice as “making itself seen.” At the risk of annoying the reader, I shall hereafter hyphenate the word “e-vidence” to emphasize the middle voice sense in which I am using it.
M. Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” D. F. Krell, ed., Basic Writings ( San Francisco: Harper Row, 1993 ), 134.
Heidegger, “The Age of the World as Picture,” The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. and ed. W.Lovitt ( New York: Harper Row, 1977 ), 13.
Heidegger, “Logos (Heraclitus Fragment B50)” in Early Greek Thinking, trans. D. F. Krell ( New York: Harper Row, 1975 ), 59–78.
W J. Richardson, “Psychoanalysis and the Being-Question” in J. H. Smith and W. Kerrigan, eds., Interpreting Lacan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983); “Heidegger Among the Doctors” in J. Sallis, ed., Reading Heidegger. Commemorations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); “La vérité dans la psychanalyse” in R. Major et al., eds., Lacan avec les Philosophes. Bibliothèque du College international de philosophie ( Paris: Albin Michel, 1991 ).
Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson ( London: SCM Press, 1962 ), 228–235.
Fink, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995 ), 25.
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Richardson, W.J. (2002). Psychoanalytic Praxis and the Truth of Pain. In: Babich, B.E. (eds) Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science, Van Gogh’s Eyes, and God. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 225. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1767-0_29
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